Name the internal registers of a microprocessor, and explain their functions.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Analysis:
The internal registers include a program counter, the instruction register, general purpose registers and temporary registers. The sequence of instructions (often called micro instructions) is generated by a programming language similar to a high-level language such as C. To keep track of which instruction is to be executed next, the control unit has a dedicated register, called the program counter (PC). The program counter holds the address of either the next instruction to be executed or the address of a multi-word instruction. When the control unit requests the memory to transfer the data to the microprocessor, the data will be transferred into the microprocessor through the data bus latch and then into the instruction register. Registers inside the microprocessor are interconnected by an internal data bus. Temporary registers are used by the control unit to hold information until it is transferred to another register or used in a computation. To allow greater flexibility, instructions can effect transfers between general purpose registers. The contents of the registers are stored in a stack during subroutine calls and interrupts. The stack consists of a group of specifically allocated read/write memory; a stack pointer is required to address a location or register in the stack.